Broadband News

Goodbye BT Openworld - Hello BT Yahoo Broadband

BT announced yesterday that BT Openworld is to re-brand
itself and enhance its services by joining with Yahoo. This move appears to be focused at taking the Openworld Broadband service beyond just a mere connection and making it more into a content
service.

The new service will include elements such as: integrated parental controls, built in firewall and anti-virus software, anti-spam, pop-up killer and more. The whole customer support and billing
side is going to remain unchanged, so existing users should see no great upheaval.

Moves like this are not much of a surprise, similar alliances exist in the USA and work to help both parties, the ISP can concentrate on the connection side, and the content provider can do what
they do best. The real question that no one will know the answer to yet is, what will be the reaction of users? There is a good chance early adopters may not like this move, but with the volumes
of broadband connections in the UK rising rapidly, ensuring the new broadband experience is easy to use for what will be the next few million users is important.